I'ma see Hero today. Last night I watched Battle Royale on DVD. This is a Japanese film that has the girl who played GoGo in Kill Bill (pretty briefly, though). The movie kicked ass. Loved it. It's about a (fictional) battle that they stage once a year in Japan in which they choose a 7th grade class to fight to the death for 3 days. Only one person is allowed to survive. If you refuse to fight, you get killed by the peeps who run the battle at the end of the 3rd day. It was really, really good.

Well, I have seen footage of a pigeon and a cat subject to zero-G.

(The cat dealt with it better.)

Cats are so blase about everything, though. It had to skew the results....

I would call The Thin Red Line about 80% narrative-free, focussing instead on the beauty of the landscape

That's a movie that's about 2 hours too long -- 2 hours which would have been easily excised by dropping all the long shots of Jesus-actor's intense inscrutable gaze.

My plan for today is to see Garden State. I love my neighborhood indie theatre.

I still think this is the kiss of death to any movie. "Mundane" is, generally speaking, a word to avoid evoking.

Well, that depends - if it's intent is satiracal, then the "mundane" is serving its function.

I find 2001 laugh out loud funny in parts because of the juxtaposition of awesome technololgy vs. how boring the people are, and how petty their situations are.

attn: Frankenbuddha

I bought a DVD of Dementia this weekend (not to be confused with Francis Ford Coppola's first movie Dementia 13).

It's undoubtedly the best beat noir silent expressionist psychodrama of the early fifties I've ever seen.

As I watched the movie (only 55 minutes long) it seemed both utterly unlike anything I'd ever seen, and naggingly similar to a very few other movies.

It's shot in Venice, CA, so automatically it resonates with Touch of Evil (also shot in Venice. They both use the lone arcade in Venice which looks so great in b/w). In fact, I had the feeling Welles might have seen this, because it really seems to foreshadow some things in ToE.

It also reminded me of Plan 9 From Outer Space - that is, if Ed Wood were pretentious and competent. It's beautifully shot - by the very same cinemtographer that worked with Wood.

But mostly it reminded me of Carnival of Souls. It's odd and haunting. The Freudian psychodrama was too explicit at times - schematic and paint-by-numbers. But it still managed to touch on that same magical vibe you find in key surreal films as varied as Feuilldes serials, Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon and, of course, Bunuel and Cocteau.

But...fifties. With a big scene in a jazz nightclub. With noir lightning. And, I mentioned its a silent movie from the fifties, right?

The movie couldn't get past the film censor board (it was submitted 11 times). So odd, because it's really not explicit in anything, but just disbturbing in its atmosphere and the Freudian hoo haw. It got bought, and Ed McMahon (of all people) slapped on a portentious voice over and it was finally released years later as Daughter of Horror.

Kill Bill question:

When Uma's character sees someone that causes her to flashback in a fit of rage, there's this loud music that plays as teh screen goes red. I recognize the music - something from a '70s TV show?

It's been bugging me since I first saw vol. 1.

I recognize the music - something from a '70s TV show?

Theme from Ironside.

That was the one with the dude in the wheelchair, right?

Haven't seen that show since I was a kid.

As I type this, Uma is wheeling herself in a wheelchair....

That was the one with the dude in the wheelchair, right?

Raymond Burr no less. That high-pitched, shrill siren-y bit is at the start of the Ironside credits which shows an assassin siting on Ironside, then lowering the gun to shoot his spine and leave him in a wheelchair. Then it goes into the regular theme (by Lalo Schifrin, I think).

Lalo also did the theme to Medical Center which was a way-more kickass theme than that show really needed. (Lalo's most famous, of course, for the Mission: Impossible theme, and various early 70s movies like Bullitt).

Hero is glorious. Most beautiful movie I've seen all year, both emotionally and visually. (Great soundtrack, too, but it's based on an album I already own.) I'll be interested to see what ita makes of the martial arts; all I knew or cared about was the glory of people in robes and trailing hair sweeping about with swords.

I suspect there will be little of me to make of the martial arts. Wuxia and reality are not closely related. Beauty and magic are paramount.